Insights into the Perth arts scene

Scale Variable 2014

Since 2001 Tos Mahoney and team (Tura New Music) have been presenting Scale Variable concerts celebrating the ocean of new music from the present and recent past. This year Scale Variable is shaping up to be an exciting series across the year with the first gigs coming up this month:

The program is intended to be nothing less than “an assessment by these distinguished musicians of the current state of serious music.”

American experimentalism is the point of departure, with works by John Cage and Christian Wolf, in contrast to Brady’s own guitar-influenced post-modern chamber music. New Zealand composer Annea Lockwood’s meditative composition forms another counterpoint, balancing premiers

by two of Australia’s leading younger composers, John Encarnacao and Erik Griswold.

On Thursday April 9th Silver Swans is the title of an Etica ensemble concert presenting the WA premiere of James Ledger’s Silver Swans, the world premier of Chris Tonkin’s Transient States and a reprisal of Ross Edwards’ Laikan which was premiered at the Perth Festival in 1980.

Later in the year there is also Sound Collectors (July 18th) which brings a strong interrogation and developmental composition process to the series. The Sound Collectors are Louise Devenish and Leah Scholes. Their collective backgrounds in contemporary percussion, percussion theatre and graphic score realisation are combined in a process of collecting, discovering, exploring, interpreting and sharing new and diverse music for two percussionists.

And in a programming coup Lisa Moore is finally giving her first Perth performance. On August 9th she will be performing a program for piano and voice called From Me to You.

Crowned “New York’s queen of avant-garde piano’ and ‘visionary’ in The New Yorker this Australian virtuoso has performed with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists including the London Sinfonietta, New York City Ballet, Bargemusic, ExhAust, Howl, So Percussion, Le Train Blue, Eighth Blackbird and the New York League of Composers. Lisa moved to New York in 1985 and has released 7 solo recordings and over 30 collaborative recordings, with two new solo recordings soon to be released.

And for those in Melbourne on 10th November Cat Hope is visiting with Decibel Ensemble forThe Giacinto Scelsi Project. This program features works from Giacinto Scelsi’s (1905-1988) latter period as well as reworking’s and new compositions inspired by the composer.

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Give me words and music and I’m happy!
Rosalind is an arts journalist, author and speaker. She founded Noted in 2012 to cover the Perth arts scene. She is currently co-editor of Seesaw Magazine.
Check out the startling discoveries about Australian women composers in her book Women of Note which completes the missing jigsaw pieces of Australia’s music history.